The hefty storage capacity in this SSD comes with a hefty price.
Got an extra $1,299.99 collecting dust on your desktop specifically set aside for storage? Then Other World Computing has exactly what you need: the OWC Mercury Electra MAX 3G 960 GB 2.5-inch SSD. That's no typo (this time): the company's latest SSD packs nearly 1 TB of storage in a SSD form factor that doesn't require a PCI-Express connection.
"This high-performance 3.0 Gb/s SATA Solid State Drive offers Mac and PC users maximum storage capacity along with the test-proven, award-winning performance of Mercury brand SSDs to meet real-world software applications demands," the company said on Friday.
According to OWC, the drive was designed specifically for mass storage uses such as A/V files, image libraries, and databases. It also features 7-percent over provisioning, Tier 1/Grade A NAND, and a handy three-year warranty. Even more, it utilizes SandForce DuraClass technology, meaning it offers up to 100x in data protection compared to ordinary SSDs and leading enterprise-class hard disk drives.
"By combining the highest level of Error Correction Code (ECC) and SandForce RAISE (Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements) technology, along with 7-percent over provisioning, the Mercury Electra MAX 3G 960 GB SSD provides RAID-like data protection and reliability without loss of transfer speed due to parity," the company said.
The specs state that it features two SandForce 2181 Series controllers, and offers sustained read and write speeds up to 254 MB/s and 250 MB/s respectively. Intelligent Block Management & Wear Leveling automatically distributes data evenly across the entire SSD, and Intelligent Read Disturb Management spreads the active read/write across the flash components, eliminating data corruption caused by constant use.
Compatible with Macs, PCs and external enclosures that utilize 2.5-inch drives, the Mercury Electra MAX 3G 960 GB SSD is available now from Other World Computing as well as through select retailers. Desktop users wanting to use the SSD can choose from one of five adapters OWC offers starting at $3 for utilizing 2.5-inch drives in 3.5-inch bays.
With OWC being very Mac friendly(the main market they target), I would almost guess this is because the latest sandforce drives seem to fall back to sata 1.5gbps when used in Nvidia based Mac computers(I would guess Windows computers with the same chipset are affected the same way).
This may be a smarter move then one would guess for anyone with an older Mac
$1,269.99 as per link
that seems like a reasonable price for it.
see
the drive's advertise speeds dont even saturate sataII.
Ha. What an expensive toy.
$1300 for a SSD, and they wouldn't spring for an adapter. Wow, that's just douchbaggery to a whole new level.
They don't saturate it because doing so would be pretty much impossible. You can put a SATA3 SSD on a SATA2 port and it won't quite saturate it in 300MB/s either. If OCZ wanted to, they could have made it faster.
It reminds me of my dad buying a $500 printer, and it had no ink cartridge. The ink cartridge for the printer was $60.
I think the cartridge had unicorns' tears in it or something. Or he got ripped off.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227788
Almost twice as expensive despite it being on sale for $350 off. It's also just about twice as fast for some workloads (maybe even better for others), so either drive can be argued as justified in this scenario, depending on rather or not capacity per dollar or pure performance is most important between the two drives.
Not a SAS SSD.
I guess you don't know how well many SSDs and RAID mix, especially RAID that involves parity instead of very wasteful redundancy... You also ignore the fact that this is a high-reliability drive and a RAID system of four lower reliability drives would be orders of magnitude less reliable if these numbers in the article are accurate. Performance isn't everything. Also, what level of RAID did you have in mind? RAID 0 would be suicide and RAID 1 would be wasteful, leaving RAID 5 as the most likely and probably the best such option, but still meaning less capacity and less capacity per dollar in most cases.